As a junior postdoctoral researcher I focus on the development of therapeutic entities to treat kidney failure. During my PhD research I successfully developed functional kidney tubules as the operative core of an extracorporeal bioartificial kidney (BAK). In my current project I aim to develop three-dimensional bioprinted implantable kidney tubules consisting of stem cell-derived kidney cells and advanced biomaterials, as a novel treatment modality to replace renal function.

Jitske Jansen started her PhD career after a 7 year position as a technician at the Canisius Wilhelmina Hospital and RadboudUMC, Nijmegen. She performed her PhD research at the department of Pharmacology & Toxicoloy, in collaboration with the dept. of Physiology and Pediatrics, RadboudUMC, Nijmegen (2012-2015). In this project she focused on the development of an extracorporeal bioartificial kidney (BAK) as a promising avenue to improve current renal replacement therapies. She successfully developed fully-functional bioengineered renal tubules as the operative core of an extracorporeal BAK device. She was awarded the best publication prize for PhD students for her paper on these results published in Nature Scientific Reports in 2015, by the Federation of European Pharmacology Societies (EPHAR) and the European Association for Clinical Pharmacology and Therapeutics (EACPT) in June 2016.

In her current position as a junior postdoctoral researcher she aims to develop three-dimensional bioprinted implantable kidney tubules consisting of stem cell-derived kidney cells and advanced biomaterials. To get acquainted with induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) biology and kidney organoids culture, she initiated a collaboration with Prof. M.H. Little (Royal Children’s Hospital, MCRI, Melbourne, Australia) and performed a fellowship in her lab in 2017. To support this research, she received a Dutch Kidney Foundation Kolff Postdoc Fellowship abroad grant and an EMBO Short-Term Fellowship. Recently, a Dutch Kidney Foundation PhD student grant entitled 'Three-dimensional bioprinting of vascularized kidney tubules' was awarded which will support the development of novel treatment modalities to replace kidney function.